Personal Profile of Dr. Hélène Barcelo

Hélène Barcelo is the Deputy Director of MSRI, a position she has held since July 1, 2008. As Deputy Director, she is in charge of overseeing all scientific activities at the Institute. In 2018-19, Professor Barcelo will serve as MSRI's Acting Director.
A native of Québec, Canada, Hélène Barcelo received her PhD in mathematics in 1988 at the University of California, San Diego. After a three-year postdoctoral position at the University of Michigan, she moved to Arizona State University. There she received the Charles Wexler Award for distinguished teaching, and four doctoral and eight master students completed their degrees under her direction.
Professor Barcelo has held visiting positions at numerous universities and research institutes around the world. She is currently a Professor Emerita of Mathematics at ASU and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.
Professor Barcelo’s research interests lie in algebraic combinatorics; more specifically, combinatorial representation theory and homotopy theories in relation to subspace arrangements. Prior to becoming Deputy Director, she spent the Spring 2008 semester at MSRI as a Research Professor in the Combinatorial Representation Theory program. She was also in residence at MSRI for the year-long program in Combinatorics in 1996–97, and she visited in Fall 2004 during the Hyperplane Arrangements and Applications program.
For several years, Professor Barcelo served on the Executive Committee of the International Conference in Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics. She was also the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, and is currently a member of its advisory board. In 2018, Professor Barcelo was selected as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society. She is serving a three-year term on the Editorial Boards Committee of the AMS, after having served on its Executive Committee from 2013 to 2017. She is also currently on the Advisory Board of Matrix, the Australian International Mathematical Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia.

Introducing the Mathematical Sciences Institutes
Hélène Barcelo, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute
Ulrica Wilson, Morehouse College and Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics